Tag: stories

It’s been a while since I’ve had a guest on the site. Today I welcome Sal Page, with her thoughts on writing.

Writing and Me

Ah writing! This is something I do. I’ve tried to stop. Several times. I once wrote nothing but work stuff for four years. That horrible job. But it’s not a nice way to live. I missed it. I like having a story on the go, or two or three. Or the occasional poem or even a play. A novel, or two or three, that may never see the light of day but boy, did I enjoy writing them. And, yeah maybe writing helps keeps you sane.

Not that I call myself a writer. I’m just someone who writes.

I don’t believe, as many seem to, that when writing you have to suffer. I know it’s tough writing a novel synopsis but, if you’re talking blood, sweat and tears, I could tell you about all those from working in kitchens for thirty-plus years.

Neither do I think there’s ever going to be any money in it for me, although obviously on the odd occasion we mention writing to those that don’t, we’re suddenly going to be ‘the next JK Rowling’ so there might be some cash involved there.

The truth is I’ve made just over £700 from writing … since 1986. Yes, I’ve been writing for some time. I make close to that per month now, as a part time cook. So, I’m a cook and someone who writes.

Recently, I’ve been leaving flash, stories and novels behind, in favour of memoir and non-fiction. I’ve started writing my weight loss memoir/self-help book, The Impossible Thing. (#TheImpossibleThing, my own hashtag!) In the past three years, four months I’ve lost 101 pounds (7 stone 3). I’m aiming to lose 130 pounds and to keep it off. Then I’ll be qualified to finish this book and maybe it will, somehow, reach a few readers. Sal Page solves the obesity crisis single-handedly.

The next chapter I plan to write is a memoir one about being at school. In the spring of 2017, I wrote a blogpost that listed the names I got called at school. This was quite a moment. I could never have dreamt I’d go from being deeply ashamed and embarrassed and not telling a soul to telling, effectively, the world.

I love everything about writing. Having ideas, thinking about them, writing notes, getting stuck into a first draft, letting things lie, talking about writing on Twitter, reading other people’s work and putting my spoke in, redrafting, editing, tinkering, perfecting, submitting, having things accepted or rejected, getting listed, placed, winning, reading in open mics or being invited to read ‘cos I’m placed or the winner. I love the little shelf of anthologies with my stories in, my Amazon page and rereading things I wrote years ago and still love ‘cos they’re mine.

‘Why do you write?’ is a question often asked on Twitter. My answers are always ‘It can stop me thinking about food’, ‘I can create a world and control everything in it’ and ‘It’s FUN.’

This a story for anyone who has ever had computer problems, so that’s all of us. My computer went pop earlier this week and had to go to the computer hospital. It is now back, restored to health. What a relief.

Feely (pictured on the chair at which I sit to use my computer) is a male cat, so obviously not the one in the story!

This a safe attachment, trust me

I clicked on the attachment to the e-mail. Next thing there were multiple windows opening and reopening again as fast as I closed them. The screen was pulsating with the speed of it but I didn’t panic, just turned the computer off and went to make myself a cup of coffee. It was a shame that the cat got under my feet and hot coffee spilt on her, but I still didn’t panic.

Rebooted, the computer seemed fine. But as I started typing a document a little dog strayed onto the screen.

“Woof,” it went.

“Woof to you,” I said, “go away.”

“Won’t,” it said. I turned off the sound. I was not going to be dictated to by an animation.

“Be careful,” said the cat, from her seat behind me.

I whirled round. The cat was curled up like a cinnamon whirl, apparently dead to the world. I turned back to the computer. The dog on the screen had started eating my text and spewing it out of its backside in a mangled heap of letters.

This was too much. I started banging the desk, remembering too late what this would do to my collarbone.

“Ow!” I yelled, as pain shot up my arm.

“You should be more careful,” mewed the cat gleefully.

I’m thinking of selling the computer. Pen and paper have a safe track record, and no attachments with hidden secrets to trip you up. Perhaps I’d better ask the cat. She’s offering opinions on everything now.

It’s National Flash Fiction Day in the UK tomorrow, 16th June. Every year there’s a Flash Flood of stories. My story The curious incident of the pig in the café was included in the Flash Flood a couple of years back.

This year I have a micro story included. It’s called Lonely Hearts and it’ll be published here at about 1.50pm (BST) on 16th June.

The curious incident of the pig in the café

It was that elusive thing, the first day of summer. The day when you fling off your cardies and your winter boundaries. So it was that at 12 noon sharp Charmaine and Sophie could be seen emerging from the dingy office where they worked, heading for Porky’s Pizzeria, just up the street. The local dosser, Ed the Rags, was sitting in a doorway crying out for the price of a cup of tea as usual.

There was a queue at Porky’s. As usual. The girls were happy to wait in the sunshine for their “You must be smoking!” specials with smoked cheese, bacon, pepperoni and smoked sausage. As they had their faces raised to the sun neither of them noticed Ed the Rags approaching. Someone must have slipped him a fiver. He pushed to the top of the queue and no-one tried to stop him, be it out of guilt or revulsion, because he ponged something terrible.

Ed got his pizza and emerged from the café dripping cheese and tomato onto the street and himself as he shoved the hot pizza into his mouth. A shout went up from inside. Had Ed run away without paying? It didn’t look like it, the way he was ambling with a beatific smile on his face. But following him and sniffing at his shoes, was a pig. A genuine porker!

Charmaine jumped back and Sophie squealed as her friend’s stiletto nearly pierced her foot. Other people were spilling out of the doorway holding their noses. A pungent odour swirled in the air, and it was not the sweet smell of baking dough mingling with cooked meats, but something altogether more earthy.

Francesco, chef-patron of Porky’s, emerged in a cloud of Italian expletives, waving a tea-towel at the retreating backs of Ed and the porker.

“Finito!” he cried. “Ze lunch is finito. Zat pig has made escremento in my café. Eet is a dirty dog.”

People watched as Ed the Rags and the pig processed down the street. Ed seemed to remain blissfully unaware of his follower, engrossed as he was in the rich flavours of his pizza. Then the pig must have pulled at his coat, because he turned and saw it. What he did next was either poignant or gross, depending on your point of view. He bent down and offered the beast his last piece of pizza. The pig swallowed it whole and ran off down the street.

It turned out that the pig had escaped from a lorry that was taking it to market and run in the open back door of Porky’s. It’s now gone to live the rest of its days in a community farm, where it may not get pizza but children feed it other titbits daily. Ed the Rags got his his toothless grin in the local paper and some kindly old soul has paid for him to have pizza every week from Francesco.

As for Porky’s, it’s thriving more than ever, it’s name finally justified!